High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Title:
Superconducting Detectors for Super Light Dark Matter

Abstract: We propose and study a new class of superconducting detectors which are
sensitive to O(meV) electron recoils from dark matter-electron scattering. Such
devices could detect dark matter as light as the warm dark matter limit, mX >
keV. We compute the rate of dark matter scattering off of free electrons in a
(superconducting) metal, including the relevant Pauli blocking factors. We
demonstrate that classes of dark matter consistent with terrestrial and
cosmological/astrophysical constraints could be detected by such detectors with
a moderate size exposure.